Deep-Bellied Places of Woman

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gorithefairone

Deep-Bellied Places of Woman

 

i listen with awe to

the sound of women’s souls

painting their lives in

words across the page,

each voice different

as she spills her heart into

the moon’s sure embrace.

 

i drink in the brew and see

the rock-solid foundation that is

woman taking shape again

across this land,

meeting mother earth’s

undulating curves

ragged peaks

soft, still waters

with her own.

 

mother earth has missed

our honest voices,

out truth-telling,

spoken in spite of unspoken

yet so-very present

threats of harm

if

we dare tell the truth of our lives.

 

she is hungry for this

bedrock of soul

to lie up against

the outline of her body,

her soul.

 

she has missed us knowing her this way.

she has missed us knowing ourselves in this way.

 

we are remembering, together.

always, together.

 

(c) Julie M Daley, 2014

 

written during Writing Raw, Fall 2014

 

:::

 

Writing Raw, Winter 2015 is now open for registration, with an early bird price until Dec. 31, 2014

I would love for you to join us. The circle is already forming.

image is ‘gori, the fair one’ by anurag agnihotri on flickr under cc 2.0 license.
no changes were made to this beautiful image.

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Do I really want that cup of coffee?

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Light up the Earth with your love and quiet joy.

This morning I’ve been writing since the early hours. Lately, over the past few weeks, I’ve been craving coffee, and giving into that craving more often than I’d like. This morning as I shifted to finished one project and got ready to move onto another, I had this very familiar urge to go out and grab a cup of coffee to bring back home.

I have to: I love coffee…especially Blue Bottle coffee served here in San Francisco. I love it, but my body does not. When I operate out of habit, I drink it. When I am conscious enough to consider what I am doing to my body, I don’t. I stop myself from doing this seemingly very average thing that so many people do because I know drinking coffee makes my body feel bad.

This isn’t to say that coffee is bad or good. There are a ton of studies that have been done on coffee – some say it is helpful, some say it is harmful. I know others who love coffee and their bodies have no issues with drinking it. I am not one of them. For whatever reason, my body doesn’t like it.

So, back to this morning, I didn’t step out for that cup. Instead, I made another cup of green tea. My body breathed a sigh of relief – a subtle sigh, for sometimes the body’s indicators are somewhat subtle. I have to be paying attention. And, I know I must pay attention to my body. In fact, just before moving onto that next project, I read this quote by Paul Hawken:

No matter what we do to nature—when we cease doing it, within a nanosecond, nature starts to regenerate. And WE are nature.

In reading these words, I realized this thing I go through, trying to become much more conscious about how I treat my body, what foods I put into it and the movement I make sure it enjoys, is no different than what I must do to become more conscious of how I mistreat the earth.

Habit and habitual responses can be hard to break, especially when we are addicted to them. We may not be addicted to the substance – I don’t drink coffee enough to have a headache when I don’t – yet, we are addicted to the habitual choices, and corresponding feelings, we get from making and acting on those choices. I love stepping outside in the early morning and walking the twenty minutes or so to get my coffee. I love the café and the people in it, and in the morning I love chatting with them. I love the routine. It’s important for me to see what I love about it, because perhaps I can separate out what I love and the things that support me and my well-being from the parts of this habit that do know support my well-being.

The same is true for the habits I have, and the corresponding choices I make, that contain actions that are ultimately harmful to the earth. Can I see where my actions are causing damage to the earth? Might there be things I do habitually, things I love and enjoy but also harm my body, others, and/or the earth, that I can untangle so that the harm to my body, and to the earth ends?

Habits sometimes come down to not wanting to feel, and sometimes it’s just about habitual stuff we do because we aren’t conscious. Can I learn to do without the plethora of choice I’ve become accustomed to? Yes, of course. Absolutely. I am not, nor have I ever been, entitled to have whatever I want. That’s a big one. Just because I ‘want’ it, does not mean it is best for the whole for me to take it…whether it’s the whole of my body or the whole of life. And, who is the ‘wanter’ anyway? It seems to me, the wanter wants to want more than it wants to get. I have to admit, sometimes just getting that cup of Blue Bottle is much better than drinking it.

For me though, the big reminder here comes from Hawkins’ wisdom that life regenerates and renews, and we are life. As soon as we stop the actions that cause damage, nature begins to renew itself and our bodies do the same. Our bodies are intricately connected to the earth. The earth feeds us, supports us, and provides for us. When we nourish our bodies, we nourish her; when we nourish her, we nourish ourselves.

Habit. Awareness. Choice. It’s in my hands. It’s in your hands. It’s in our hands.

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Prayer, Longing and the Earth

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Today, a friend sent me a link to this video by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and his article, Praying for the Earth. In it, Vaughan-Lee speaks of our need and about how our need is a way into prayer. It is truly beautiful. Watch it full screen, if you can.

PRAYER – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee from Working with Oneness on Vimeo.

During my time in Hana, I could feel the land, the ocean, the air and the fire that lies at the heart of the earth. The elements are strong there.

As I slept at night, the breezes blew across my face and the smell of rain filled my dreams. In the daytime, the fragrance of Frangiapani and the sight of dolphins playing just across the street from where I was writing awakened the pain in my heart, the pain that comes when one sees so many faces of beauty and feels its immediacy.

To remember the earth, is to know her soul, to know her aliveness and our connection to her.

To wake up to our bodies and the wisdom and aliveness within them is to awaken to the same aliveness and wisdom of the earth.

As I communed with the land of Hana, I became painfully aware of how much I need the earth, of how much I long to feel connected to her, to know her, to witness her, to hold her and to be held by her. Just writing these words causes the tears of love and longing to flow.

flowers along the trail

At home here in the city, it is harder to feel the land. I find places in which to do so when I can. Yet, I feel this need to go back to Hana and I know I can’t. I must be here where I live. So I ask myself, “What is this longing?” What is this great need I feel in my body and heart to be in communion with the earth and the elements, with the rhythm and feel of Hana?”

In Hana, the earth fed me with her fresh pineapple and mango. She held me as I swam in her waters and walked in her mud, mud sprinkled with delicate beauty. I found a joy and peace, a sensuality that is born from life touching me directly, in so many simple yet profound ways. I felt an organic connection with her. Gratitude flowed up and out of me toward her. Not the kind of gratitude that is a thought, or something I should do. I didn’t do it. It just came in response to her beauty and all she gives.

Perhaps my longing for the earth, for the land is an organic recognition of the connection of woman with the earth, and an understanding that she needs us as much as we need her. To honor her is to awaken her to her beauty, to her wildness and grandeur. And perhaps, it is a way to awaken women to what we have forgotten about womanhood.

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The Challenge is Now

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In every advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives, the adult female grows fierce when the cubs are threatened. And we….? ~Marianne Williamson

We women are protectors of the children and of the earth. Look at the love in this woman for her child.  You can feel it.

In the Iroquois tradition, it was women who held the key responsibility of deciding whether or not to go to war, for they considered, fully, the effects of war on the children, on the generations ahead, and on the earth itself. We love our children. But we, today’s women, have been deeply conditioned out of trusting our own instincts, our feelings, and our fierceness.

Earlier this year, there was a story in the NY Times about women in India who could not feed their children. I remember reading it, and looking at the accompanying photos of these beautiful women with their starving children, and realizing just how deeply we have been conditioned to believe we have no power. What stopped these women from doing ANYTHING they could to feed their starving children? When I wondered this, I turned the question back on myself. What stopped me from doing anything to feed my starving children and grandchildren? It’s not that they don’t have enough food. They do. For now. But, and this is the important message that is now coming out loud and clear, we women know deep inside that there is something horribly wrong with the way things are in the world. As Marianne Williamson expressed, our cubs are threatened. We are all threatened. We feel it in our bodies, for we feel the wounding of the earth and all children in our bodies.

As I read this article, I felt rage that these women had no hope to feed their children, and complete wonder at how our conditioning is so strong as to kill the instinct in us to do whatever it takes to get food in the mouths of our babies.

A beautiful woman, Diana Stone, has written a book that will be released in the spring of next year. She came to speak to our Institute of Sacred Activism workshop in September. She told us that the Iroquois have said that women must stand and speak. It is time for women to stand and speak.

The time is now. I have heard this too many times to be able to hold back any longer.

The time is now. For women to speak. For women to stand and speak, to voice what they are feeling.

The time is now for me to speak, as a woman, as a mother, as a grandmother.

We are facing this challenge each and every day. What greater challenge could there be than the end of the world in the way we have known it to be. I stepped my toe into the waters with my post on Living Gratefully. But that was not enough.

Enough is enough. I spent the afternoon, yesterday, with two of my three grandchildren. When I look at them, I wonder what kind of world they will live in. I wonder how long they will get to live. I wonder how much suffering they will endure, simply because we, people who have the ability to do something about the state of affairs we find ourselves in, have done nothing to really stop the anguish of the earth, to stop our own greed, to stop our separate ways.

Yesterday, I received this long quote from a dear friend. It is an excerpt from a book she is reading, Wisdom’s Daughters (2002), which contains the words of Women Elders of Native America. The woman whose wisdom follows is Vickie Downey of the Tewa Tesugue Pueblo.

It is the time of the feminine. With a woman that is what we feel. When I look around at the different women, I see sadness and a heaviness within themselves. What they are experiencing is what the earth is experiencing — her sadness and heaviness because of the way her children are living today. Women, they have that; the feeling is there in their hearts more so than the male people, cause the male is always doing things. The male also has to realize that he has a female part to him and he has to start feeling that same feeling.

Women have to be recognized. The words of women have to be recognized. The women will come out. It might be prophesied or doesn’t have to be prophesied, but the feeling is so strong that women will come out and voice their feelings. Whether people want to hear it or not, it is going to come because it is meant to be. It is that time.

Most women can’t comprehend what it is. They feel it. It is like a depression so they go to psychiatrists, therapists, trying to figure it out. Or it turns into physical ailments. Feelings into physical ailments. So they don’t know. They know something is going on but they cannot pinpoint exactly what it is.

As people, as native people, we are trying to do our best to tell the world this is what is happening to you. This is what is happening to us. This is what is happening to the earth. No matter how many words we give them, how many books we give them, how much information we give them, it won’t help them until they finally decide “well, I am going to accept this. I am sick. I am a sick society. I am a sick world. I am a sick person.”

When we do that we can heal. Then we turn around and we help each other. Then there will not be homelessness. Then we won’t have hunger. We won’t have wars….

So, the message is coming through loud and clear. This is the challenge, and it is here, now.

The Dalai Lama recently surprised listeners when he said, “The world will be saved by western women.” We women in the west, have the more power, resources, and connection to each other than women have had anywhere in the world for many, many centuries.

All over the world, now, women have the ability to voice what is happening, to stand and speak, whether it be to each other, to their neighbors, to their government, or to each other through. We can speak through many means, which blogging is but one.

Two great quotes have been swirling in my head for some time, now.

You must learn not to be careful. Diane Arbus

You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you! Isadora Duncan

These words take me back inside, where my feelings and instincts as a woman reside. My fierce love was tamed, made dormant and silent. But we were once wild here, and we are still wild within.

What will it take to stand and speak, to grow fierce and vocal?

Image by Yogendra174, Flickr

This post is part of The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge (by blogger Gwen Bell):
Day 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?

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